1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for assigning a job to any one of apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, many different techniques for energy saving have been proposed. An example of methods for energy saving is to reduce power required to control the temperature of a room in an office, and so on.
The temperature of a room is often adjusted by using an air conditioner. Thus, appropriate control of air conditioners can save energy.
In the meantime, Office Automation (OA) equipment such as an image forming apparatus and a personal computer has recently been installed in business offices. Techniques for energy saving are also applied to such OA equipment. For example, according to a sleep mode technique, if no operation has been carried out in OA equipment for a preset time period, a hard disk and a display of the OA equipment stops operating temporarily, which reduces power consumption of the OA equipment.
There is proposed a method for controlling the temperature of a room where both an image forming apparatus and air-conditioning equipment (air conditioner) are installed. An example of the method is given below.
A home server controls an image forming apparatus and an air conditioner collectively. The image forming apparatus reads a print job quantity and transmits it to the air conditioner. The air conditioner cools and warms a room in response to the print job quantity. The air conditioner detects a temperature and humidity in the room and transmits the detected result to the image forming apparatus. The image forming apparatus controls a drive fan, a condensation preventing heater, and a dehumidification heater in the apparatus and adjusts a temperature and humidity in the apparatus based on the temperature and the humidity in the room (see the English abstract of Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2003-186373).
According to the method, it is necessary for the home server to manage the air conditioner. In recent years, there have been proposed electrical appliances having a function to perform communication with another device via a network, i.e., intelligent home appliances. However, the widespread use of such intelligent home appliances is yet to come. At present, the vast majority of electrical appliances have no communication function. In view of this, it probably takes a little time before the foregoing method is widely used.
On the other hand, almost all of image forming apparatuses have recently been equipped with a communication function. Further, some techniques for controlling an image forming apparatus by using a server become widespread.